Read Tin Star for Free Online

die? Scores.”
    I knew what he was saying was true. I wanted to cry, but instead I hardened myself.
    “But I’m feeling generous today,” Heckleck said. “Give me the plant and I will owe you a favor.”
    “Favors are useless if I’m dead. Besides, how can I trust you?”
    “You can’t,” Heckleck said. “I’m not a nice Hort.”
    I laughed. It was not funny, but somehow having a conversation with someone felt normal after being so isolated.
    “Are you strong enough to run an errand for me?” Heckleck asked. “If you are, then I will pay you in currency loaded onto this chit. I do not go to the social level often; the noise is too much for my kind when it is most crowded, even with the nanite frequency adjustments. But I have to deliver this package to a ship captain who likes to get drunk at Kitsch Rutsok’s bar when he’s in port. Deliver it and bring back the item he gives you, and I’ll pay you then.”
    “Pay me first,” I said.
    “This is why the universe is at such odds with itself. No one trusts anyone!” Heckleck said handing me a chit. “Fine. Here is payment. If you run off with it, so be it. I’ll find your dead body eventually and retrieve the item, the chit, and the plant.”
    Heckleck took a wrapped-up linen package the size of a sandwich roll out from under one of his chest plates and pressed it into my hands. The linen was wet with a grayish color.
    “What is this?” I asked.
    “It’s a digit from one of his crew members. Tell him to give you the item, or I’ll send the rest of the crew members to him in pieces.”
    I realized the grayish substance was likely the alien’s blood.
    I looked over Heckleck’s shoulder out the window, at the planet and beyond it to the stars.
    I stood up.
    If I was going to survive and get off of this station, I would have to trust him. I felt dizzy, my stomach grumbled. I had to eat. It had been too long. I was afraid that if I took the plant with me I would lose it. It was safer here.
    I placed the plant in front of Heckleck.
    “If I find that you have betrayed me in any way, I will summon up all of my strength and use it to kill you,” I said.
    “Then we have an agreement,” Heckleck said.
    I nodded and then stumbled out of the cargo bay.
    I would do it. I would live.

 
    5
    Kitsch Rutsok’s bar was as crowded as a place on an empty space station could be. Still, since hardly any ships docked on the Yertina Feray, it was not hard to spot the captain that Heckleck wanted me to give the digit to. He was a blobby sort of creature who was red all over his body, with enormous arms and hands and, most likely due to the difference of gravity that he was used to, he floated on a hover seat. He was gesticulating and shouting as he played a game of chance that looked like roulette. There were two females of his species hanging on to him. Every time he won a round they moved their seats from side to side and bumped in a little closer to each other.
    I went to the bar and looked at the menu. I knew from having run my errands for Brother Blue that not much on the menu was actual food. Real food and nonrecycled water were rare and expensive. The bulk of the menu was different kinds of protein paks similar to what we had been rationed to eat on the Prairie Rose . The variety offered was to cater to the different nutritional needs of different kinds of aliens. At this point for me, being so malnourished, anything would do. The barkeep came over to me, and I pointed to a random item and presented the currency chit. The barkeep ran my chit through.
    “Sorry, Human. This chit says pending. It needs to be authorized. Come back in a few hours.”
    Heckleck had cheated me. Or rather, he had ensured that I would do the job before I did anything else. My stomach growled. I felt faint. But hunger has a way of energizing a person. I pushed through the crowd to confront the blobby captain.
    “Move out of my way,” he said as I squeezed in front of him, hitting my